1. Field of the Invention                This invention relates to cardiac physiology. More particularly, this invention relates to the evaluation of electrical propagation in the heart.        
2. Description of the Related Art
TABLE 1Acronyms and AbbreviationsCFAEComplex Fractionated Atrial ElectrogramECGElectrocardiogramEGMElectrogramFIRFinite Infinite ResponseIIRInfinite Impulse ResponseLATLocal Activation TimeWCTWilson Central Terminal
Cardiac arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation are an important cause of morbidity and death. Commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,546,951, and 6,690,963, both issued to Ben Haim and PCT application WO 96/05768, all of which are incorporated herein by reference, disclose methods for sensing an electrical property of heart tissue, for example, local activation time, as a function of the precise location within the heart. Data are acquired with one or more catheters having electrical and location sensors in their distal tips, which are advanced into the heart. Methods of creating a map of the electrical activity of the heart based on these data are disclosed in commonly assigned U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,226,542, and 6,301,496, both issued to Reisfeld, which are incorporated herein by reference. As indicated in these patents, location and electrical activity is typically initially measured on about 10 to about 20 points to generate a preliminary reconstruction or map of the cardiac surface. The preliminary map is often combined with data taken at additional points in order to generate a more comprehensive map of the heart's electrical activity. Indeed, in clinical settings, it is not uncommon to accumulate data at 100 or more sites to generate a detailed, comprehensive map of heart chamber electrical activity. The generated detailed map may then serve as the basis for deciding on a therapeutic course of action, for example, tissue ablation, to alter the propagation of the heart's electrical activity and to restore normal heart rhythm.
Catheters containing position sensors may be used to determine the trajectory of points on the cardiac surface. These trajectories may be used to infer motion characteristics such as the contractility of the tissue. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,738,096, issued to Ben Haim, which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference, maps depicting such motion characteristics may be constructed when the trajectory information is sampled at a sufficient number of points in the heart.
Electrical activity at a point in the heart is typically measured by advancing a multiple-electrode catheter to measure electrical activity at multiple points in the heart chamber simultaneously. A record derived from time varying electrical potentials as measured by one or more electrodes is known as an electrogram. Electrograms may be measured by unipolar or bipolar leads, and are used, e.g., to determine onset of electrical propagation at a point, known as local activation time.
However, determination of local activation time as an indicator of electrical propagation becomes problematic in the presence of conduction abnormalities. For example, atrial electrograms during sustained atrial fibrillation have three distinct patterns: single potential, double potential and a complex fractionated atrial electrograms (CFAE's). Thus, compared to a normal sinus rhythm signal, an atrial fibrillation signal is extremely complex, as well as being more variable. While there is noise on both types of signal, which makes analysis of them difficult, because of the complexity and variability of the atrial fibrillation signal the analysis is correspondingly more difficult. On the other hand, in order to overcome the atrial fibrillation in a medical procedure, it is useful to establish possible paths of activation waves travelling through the heart representing atrial fibrillation. Once these paths have been identified, they may be blocked, for example, by appropriate ablation of a region of the heart. The paths may be determined by analysis of intra-cardiac atrial fibrillation signals, and embodiments of the present invention facilitate the analysis.